Smrt Lernins

Captain Science’s cast is off as of Wednesday and we are moving and grooving again! Hooray for a return to something like a normal schedule.

Ancient Greek history continues smoothly. Captain Science used Eyewitness: Ancient Greece as his main text this week, and covered Troy, Athens, Sparta, and Greek Warfare. He wrote summaries about Athenian history and warfare, and was quite stoked to learn that flamethrowers were used in Ancient Greece. He now knows what agora, frieze, strategoi, hoplite, perioikoi, helots are. He finished Tales of Troy and a retelling of The Odyssey. We’ll start back with maps and time line next week, since he didn’t get his cast off until Wednesday and still has limited arm mobility.

The Captain started his first memorization project, the poem Prometheus Amid Hurricane and Earthquake by Aeschylus, though I admit we weren’t nearly as good about practicing that this week as I’d wanted us to be. He enjoys it, has learned the first four lines, and was inspired to write his own Greek poetry. He covered chapters 5.7-5.12 in Growing with Grammar. He also began Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Grade 4, completing lessons one and two. He also read the second book in the Percy Jackson series.

Math was rough this week. He struggled with the first bridge for Life of Fred: Fractions chapters 16-19, so we made him complete all five tries this week. By the fourth and fifth try, however, he got everything right, so today he completed chapter 20 with no trouble. We’re glad to have him rolling on that again. His biggest issue is just not wanting to write everything out. He can do most of it in his head, but if he makes a tiny mistake mentally, his answer will not only be wrong, but we have no way of knowing how he went wrong. It’s hard to make him show work for problems when the answer he gives is correct, but I’ve told him that until he shows mastery of the concepts, he has to always show his work. I know that’s the best course of action, but it’s a little hypocritical, as I always hated having to show my work when my answers were correct.

We haven’t actually done science yet, because it was Dance Mat typing program. The Captain loved it and did all the parts of Lesson 1. He’s going to do the lesson a second time to show mastery and print his certificate, but he’s having a good time learning to type correctly.

We were unable to start our Spencerian handwriting lessons when I realized that we didn’t have the theory book and I had no idea what to do with the copy books. Hopefully can remedy that soon, even if it means a return trip to Scary Jesus Book Store. His handwriting has suffered from three weeks of his arm being casted at a 90 degree angle.

The Tank also had some table lernins this week. He’s working on a Sesame Street numbers workbook. He counted, circled, wrote 1 and 2, and traced 1-6. He loves doing homeschool with us, so I’m considering not sending him back to preschool out of the home next year. I’m just happier having them here with me!

In the world of homeschooling, being secular is too often synonymous with being alone. I’ve talked about this before, I know.

Isolation is everywhere for the rigorous secular homeschooler. Because we aren’t using religious-based curricula, we’re isolated from the large local communities of Christian homeschoolers. We’re oddities on the Well Trained Minds forums. If we aren’t unschooling, we’re even isolated from a good portion of the secular community, who think we’re anal retentive and don’t let our kids have any fun. We’re oddities at the secular co-ops and on the Mothering.com forums.

I envy Christian homeschoolers. Yes, I poke fun at some Christian curricula, but I really do envy them. They have community, not just for their educational choices, but for their whole lives. They have a place to belong. Being part of a community and staying close to your family is praiseworthy. As long as you ascribe to the same viewpoints as your religion, isolation isn’t really a problem. Some religions definitely err way too far in the other direction and become wholly intrusive into people’s lives in an oppressive way, but feeling alone, having no one like you, those aren’t problems for a Christian homeschooler teaching Christian curricula within a large Christian community. They have curriculum support from large Christian curricula publishers. They have support from their churches for protecting their children from exposure to wordly, immoral, or questionably secular things. They have support from peers, who are also homeschooling. They may even have been homeschooled themselves, depending on their church. They have support from homeschooling forums, where they comprise a significant majority. They aren’t an aberration. They aren’t alone.

The secular world, however, seems to place great value on the ability to be alone. Grow up fast. Move away. Be independent. Fish don’t need bicycles! Multigenerational living is scoffable — the quintessential “thirty year old man living in his mom’s basement” stereotype. We’re encouraged to segregate our child by age early on, as the emphasis on same-age peers is huge. Children themselves are pushed to be independent so quickly — give up the family bed, go off to preschool, spend the night away from home, and of course, mom must return to work as soon as all this happens. Culturally, we seem to value isolation…and then medicate the side effects of it.

I admit that I’m lonely. I have a few homeschooling friends, whose support I value immensely, but I sometimes wrestle with this feeling of being a pariah, both in the greater world of homeschooling and in the rest of my life. I’m way, way too liberal, “hippie,” and secular for Christians (or any religion, really) and Christian homeschooling. I’m probably significantly more moderate and mainstream than some of my secular friends, though — not alternative lifestyle enough, not “crunchy” enough, too minivan-driving suburban cop’s wife. I’m stuck in the middle with Patchfire, and we cry so many dramatic tears together.

Where’s the middle ground? Where are my people? I’m too much of a heathen for most of the homeschoolers and not enough of a free spirit for the rest of them. Where is my tribe?

Secular Thursday posted late this week due to computer crash last night.